Justin Burgwinkel Pt. Two

forward or in California. By nineteen ninety three, he had been transferred to Fort Lewis and Washington State and was maintaining a long distance relationship with his girlfriend, Yolanda Antunez, who still lived in California. But Justin was getting a bit discouraged because he was unable to rise above the rank of private. He was still stuck doing kitchen duty, and it just seemed like he was just going to

fill out his years and then be discharged. But he started dropping all these cryptic statements that he had been recruited for some sort of secret mission. He would show up to see his girlfriend with this briefcase, which supposedly contained classified documents. He was tearing up, and there was one time when somebody left a message with his girlfriend

saying tell Justin the missions off. And when Yolanda told Justin about it, he kind of had a breakdown, but he would not tell what was wrong with him, and he kind of implied that he was involved in this top secret mission involving the CIA, And things got to the point where he actually went a wall from Fort Lewis and left without permission and then transferred to California

to spend some time with Yolanda. And once it became a parent that he was going to get in trouble, he said he was going to return to Fort Lewis to sort everything out, but then he just vanished without a trace, and a couple weeks later, his parents would find his abandoned car next to a motel with a lot of his personal items in there, including his dog tags.

But curiously, the only items that were never accounted for were a pair of guns he had recently purchased, so there was speculation that he might have died by suicide and they just never found his body. But Justin has been missing for thirty years, and the military has always denied that he was ever involved in some sort of top secret mission. But because he has never been found, his family just isn't sure what really happened to him,

and it's still a big mystery. So I think that would be a good time to compare Justin's story with another unsolved mysteries case we recently covered on The Path Went Chile, and that's the disappearance of Paul Whipkey. Only a few years after enlisting in the Army, Whipkey had reached the rank of first lieutenant, and, much like Justin, he was stationed at Ford Ort. Driving away from the base in July nineteen fifty eight, Whipkey went a wall

and was eventually declared a deserter. Over a month after he went missing, Whipkey's abandoned car was discovered nearly five hundred miles away in a desolate, remote section of Death Valley, and the Army believed that he suffered some sort of mental breakdown before he wandered out into the desert and died. However, Whipkey's body was never found, and there was evidence to suggest that someone else abandoned his car at that location

to stage his disappearance. Whipkey's family believed that he may have been recruited by the CIA and sent on some sort of secret mission, but for security reasons, the government cannot reveal the truth about what happened to him. Well, I'm not going to say with one hundred percent certainty that this is what actually occurred, but I do find the scenario to be a lot more plausible in Paul

Whipkey's case than Justin Burgwinkle's. Prior to his disappearance, Whipkey had a pretty distinguished career in the army and was a decent candidate for an important secret mission. But by comparison, Justin Bergwinkle seemed like an average soldier at BET.

a secret mission, it just doesn't line up. But for Paul Whipkey it did. He was someone who had a career in the military, he was a distinguished serviceman, and it made sense except for the fact that he was sick. If you remember in that case, he was sick from the radiation poisoning. So would they pick a sick individual to go on a secret mission either, possibly, But for Justin it just doesn't seem to fit here.

army ranger or like a top secret spy. And even though he was pretty good at language skills he knew some Korean, he really didn't have anything that made him stand out and seem like a candidate that they would want to recruit to go on some sort of top secret mission.

to be there. And it's interesting with Bergwinkle because we do see, like Ashley said, he's got that ambition and he's got that ability, but he doesn't seem to have the fortitude to be able to buckle down and carry it out and to be able to control his impulses for things like shoplifting. So I just don't see an organization like the CIA or any secret organization tapping him to be somebody to be included in one of those missions. It just doesn't seem to be an alignment. Whereas we

talked about in part one with Whipkey. It really does seem to line up, But there was also the possibility that maybe he was taking part in some kind of experimental medical treatment and then he died while he was being treated. In Whipkey's case, we mentioned in our last episode that Justin was pretty skilled at language training, but completely derailed his career when he was caught shoplifting in

nineteen ninety one. This incident led to him being kicked out of the Defense Language Institute and he would be reassigned to work as a culinary specialist. I don't get the impression that he possessed any other special skills which would have led him to be recruited for a clandestine operation. In fact, it sounds like Justin's work ethic declined after

he was kicked out of the language Institute. So I don't see the CIA or any government agency gravitating towards a twenty one year old cook with no special skills or experience. Now, another parallel between Justin's case and the disappearance of Paul Wikei is that Wiki had also been displaying erratic behavior before he went missing. But there's actually

an explanation for that. The previous year, Wikey had been assigned to work on some nuclear weapons testing and was likely exposed to radioactive fallout, which caused a great strain on his physical and mental health. So it's possible that Wiki really did wander off into the desert and die, But the Army still did a lot of shady things to cover up his disappearance to avoid admitting their own

culpability in what happened to him. By comparison, I see no indication that the Army did anything to cover up Justin's disappearance, and it sounds like he went a wall and vanished completely on his own accord.

and the way he had envisioned it. That is also a very important role in the military, so not minimizing that, but he had his eyes set on something much bigger and feeling that that wasn't possible. Is it a chance that he did take his own life. But in that case, what do you think would have happened to his body?

But he probably thought, if I'm not going to be an army ranger, if I'm not going to continue serving my country, what am I going to do? He was almost like he was having a midlife crisis, even though

he was still in his early twenties. So I could see someone like that, if they feel they have no future, maybe electing suicide to be the option, but still planting the seeds so that your family and friends believe that you might be dying for your country because you're on some sort of top secret mission.

you know, being fed information that wasn't accurate. Because, like you said, Jules, if those walls are coming in, if he's caught in one of his lives, does he start to feel like either he's a disappointment to his family or that he's going to be quote found out and therefore starts to have that kind of stress and anxiety about what am I going to do to get myself out of this?

secret mission. But if he gets a discharge a few years later and then the Army doesn't come calling back and he's not being sent on any more missions, I'm sure it's going to look suspicious and make them realize that he probably wasn't telling the truth before. So there's another case which was featured on Unsolved Mysteries around the same time period which also has similarities to this one,

and that's the death of SPC. Chad Langford, who was shot to death while performing his patrol as a military policeman at Alabama's Redstone Arsenal in March of nineteen ninety two. I covered this one in episode number three thirty four

of The Trail Went Cold But Long story short. Even though the circumstances of how Langford's body was found were very strange, the military still ruled his death to be a suicide and concluded that he shot himself in a very unusual fashion in order to make his death look like a homicide. However, Chad's loved ones believed he was the victim of foul play because he had told them he was doing secret undercover work for the Army to investigate.

The Army denied that any undercover operations were taking place, so Langford could have been fabricating these stories in order to make his family believe he was more important than he really was, and stage thinks to make it look

like he was killed in the line of duty. Indeed, it is possible that Chad Langford and Justin Bergwinkle were both suffering from psychological problems and were secretly ashamed about their lack of advancement in their military careers, so they wanted to end their lives in a manner which made it look like they died heroic deaths. Of course, one of the key differences is that, unlike Justin, I do not believe that Chad had any serious disciplinary infractions on

his record which would have harmed his career. And most importantly, Justin's body has never been found, so we still can't even be certain if he went through the act of suicide. Yeah.

And if he's struggling with mental health, there is a potential that he, you know, reached out to other vices gambling, you know, sex workers, drugs, and so if any of that was something that he was starting to dabble in or get involved, and you have no idea what kind of person he could have come across.

the military, then I think you're absolutely right Ash. Maybe he reached out to or somebody reached out to him from some criminal organization and maybe he was involved in traffic, weapons trafficking, or drug dealing or something to that effect.

And especially when you look at some of these bases, they're as big as like a large town, like they're huge, So of course you're going to have some bad apples that are going to be involved in criminal activity. And maybe the connections that he made were people on the base. However, we definitely think there's a strong to be made that

Justin was having serious delusions of grandeur. I mean, I've never served in the military or been assigned to do top secret work for them, but I have to think that if I was on a date with my spouse, I wouldn't just be casually mentioning, Oh, by the way, I'm involved in some sort of secret mission, but I can't tell you much about it. I'm sure that someone who's trained in this sort of work would know to keep their mouth shut and not say anything like that

at all in front of a civilian. The bit where Justin was carrying around this mysterious looking briefcase in front of Yolanda and pulling out small pieces of paper to tear up really comes across as something that he did for show in order to make her think that he was working on something important. When he asked Yolanda to turn around while he opened it, it's like he was

practically inviting her to take a quick peek. I have to assume that if you're working on an important, top secret operation and have a briefcase containing classified information, you're not going to take it to your girlfriend's apartment on a two furlough, and if you do, you're a pretty terrible operative and likely never would have made it past the screening process to begin with.

share it more than you should. But I don't think that you would have the props and the kind of irresponsible behavior to coincide with that information. So when he is toting around this little briefcase and he's ripping up little pieces of paper, I mean, if that's classified details, you don't just sit there and rip it up by hand and you know, hope that no one can put it back together. And you don't just walk around with

the briefcase full of top secret information. So it does seem like he's almost acting a character or a part because of this feeling of that he just doesn't feel fulfilled in what he's doing, and he needs to be loved, he needs to be respected and appreciated, and because he doesn't feel like he's fulfilling that or doing something that allows him to get the attention he wants. He's starting to fabricate these things, and honestly, if he's struggling with

mental health, he might believe it. We've seen cases like that as well, where the person gets into these lies, but it's sad because they actually start to become part of that lie and believe it.

to the point where he convinced himself that it was true. Now, the most absurd part of this story is undoubtedly the phone call Yolanda received from the unidentified man who asked her to tell Justin quote the missions off. Once again, We've never worked on any covert, secret missions for the military, but if your superiors need to get in touch with you, I seriously doubt they're going to leave a message with your girlfriend to say that your mission has been canceled.

But on the other hand, since Justin was out with friends when this incident took place, who actually made the phone call? Sure Justin could have made the call himself in order to enhance this fantasy he was selling to Yolanda, But wouldn't she have recognized his voice well? Interestingly enough, the Sacramento b article that was written about this case in November of nineteen ninety three contained some comments from a soldier named John Aaron Barnett, who worked on kitchen

duty alongside Justin at Ford Ord. According to Barnett, there was one incident where Justin asked him to call Yolanda and tell her that Justin was on some sort of secret mission and was unable to see her. Barnett said that Justin sounded serious when he made this request. He

thought it was nothing more than a joke at the time. Now, it's not entirely clear to me if Barnett was referring to the missions off call or an entirely different phone call Yolanda received at a different time, But either way, this shows that Justin had a history of getting other people to make phone calls to her on his behalf

about secret missions. Since Justin was out with friends in the night, yelan to receive the missions off call, I find it totally plausible that he could have convinced one of them to phone her. Sure, no one has ever come forward to admit to doing this, but since Justin eventually went missing, the caller may have feared they would end up under a cloud of suspicion and elected to

stay silent. However, I suppose an alternate possibility is that if Justin was involved in something illegal which was unrelated to the military, somebody he was working with could have left that message, and the missions off was some sort of code. After all, Yolanda said that Justin got really distressed when he returned to the apartment and she gave him the me so if he orchestrated the phone call himself, it sounds like he was going all out to sell

the whole situation to her. We also have to remember that Yolanda later found Justin sobbing at her apartment, so he's either really upset about something or suffering from some serious mental health issues.

for sporadic, infrequent, kind of unpredictable behavior from him. The instability that she was starting to see from him because he's trying to balance another relationship. Another relationship could make a man break down and cry as well if it wasn't working out, if he had gotten dumped, if the person he was dating was married and said I'm staying

with my husband. You know, all these things could lead to him kind of having reactions that she sees a breakdown on one side, but then he's also in this top secret mission on the other. I think it's more to allow him flexibility, so he's not tied to her as often. Does that make any sense?

not only about his profession but within his relationship. And there's this infidelity, and who knows what if there is another woman what he's telling her. Is she saying, Hey, if you don't leave Yolanda, I'm gonna tell her about it. We don't know. There's a million different potential scenarios that could have been playing out that could have led to him feeling like he needed to unburden himself and cry.

But this just adds more fuel to the buyer of this disappointment of not reaching his full potential in the military. And then if he feels like he may be destroying his relationship and he just doesn't have that impulse control and that ability to stop doing these destructive acts, then that could make you feel pretty terrible and could lead to mental health issues.

you know, or your chances with her are off? Like what if that's code for something where he was actually distraught because he was like, dang it when he got that phone call from a friend saying the missions off because it was top sicker for something social and not criminal.

share a few details about the film's plot. Williem Dafoe plays a new Mexico deputy sheriff who becomes embroiled in an intriguing mystery when a man carrying a briefcase containing five hundred thousand dollars is found shot to death in the desert in an apparent suicide. A piece of paper containing a phone number is found in the victim's stomach, so Defoe decides to launch his own independent under cover operation in which he calls the number and impersonates the

dead man. After going to a pre arranged meeting, the briefcase full of money has stolen from him. Defoe soon learns that the victim was an undercover FBI agent and he's stumbled upon a complicated operation involving an international armstealer played by Mickey Rourke, who is planning to use the five hundred thousand to arm some freedom fighters in South America. It's eventually released that Rorke's character is actually a CIA agent who orchestrates the sale of weapons to America's enemies

to ensure the survival of the military industrial complex. White Sands originally came out in theaters in April of nineteen ninety two, just over a year before Justin went missing, and in retrospect, it's kind of a weird film for Justin to reference, since it got mixed reviews and didn't make much of a dent to the box office. In Robin's original Trail wunk Hold episode, he even said that if it wasn't for this case, he probably would have

forgotten that the movie even existed. But the plot is based around a briefcase full of money, and Justin was often seen carrying a briefcase, so if you saw white fans, maybe he was using it as an inspiration for an elaborate fantasy. Curiously, even though it involves the FBI and the CIA, the Army's not part of the film at all. But I think you could draw some parallels between Willem

Dafoe's character and Justin. At the start of the film, Defoe's pretty bored with his life, as being a deputy sheriff in rural New Mexico is not providing him with much excitement, so this is why he takes the initiative to impersonate the dead FBI agent and eventually finds himself in way over his head. Perhaps Justin felt the same way about his own life, which is why he constructed

a fantasy about becoming involved in a government operation. I know that Justin specifically told his parents to pay attention to Mickey Rourke's CIA agent arms dealer character, but I seriously doubt that the CIA is going to recruit a twenty one year old soldier with an average service record for a secret operation involving international arms dealing.

that's me, you know. And he really is kind of using White Sands as a script, but he's putting himself into the character that he wishes he was while he actually saw the inspiration and felt connected to the film because he identifies with Defoe's character.

and I'm just seeing it. I'm like, yeah, Justin, it's almost a wish fulfillment fantasy for him, and he kind of wishes he was exactly like Defoe's character in real life. All that being said, it's worth mentioning that there were a few incidents from this time period where military weapons from ford Ord and Fort Lewis wound up in the

hands of street gangs. In fact, in May of nineteen ninety two, the newspapers reported that members of both the Crips and the Bloods, two rival gangs from Los Angeles, had arranged deals in which personnel from ford Ord would provide them with a surplus of hand grenades and handheld

rocket launchers in exchange for drugs. Now, there's no evidence to indicate that Justin was involved in anything like this, But if these so called secret missions Justin was referring to were not just paranoid delusions, maybe they were a cover for illegal activity involving weapons or drugs or others.

Stolen goods. One interesting detail from the Sacramento b article which I did not know before, is that one of Justin's former army friends claimed that Justin often liked to flash around a military id which had his photo on it but someone else's name. These IDs were apparently quite difficult to counterfeit and likely would have landed Justin in

serious hot water if he got caught. So was there a reason he was carrying around something like that while he was stationed at Fort ord Yolanda said that Justin would sometimes abruptly end their dates and say that he needed to go back to Monterey, But he would do this completely out of the blue, without receiving any phone calls or messages. And after he went a while from Fort Lewis, Justin spent a week at Yolanda's apartment, and on several occasions he left on what he claimed were

important trips to Monterey before he disappeared. I mean, for all we know, Justin could have just been staging the whole thing as part of his fantasy. But where exactly did he go when he left on all these trips? Did he just go off and do his own thing for several hours before he returned, could he be could he have been involved in something else which had nothing

to do with a secret mission. Well, on our last episode, we made mention of some comments from the Unsolved Mysteries message board by a poster known as MPI Guy, who said there were rumors that Justin might have had another girlfriend in the town of Seaside and she got involved

in a bad situation he was trying to rescue her from. Again, it sounds like this was nothing more than rumor, and we have no idea if this other girlfriend actually existed, But since Seaside is near Moterey, that could provide an alternate explanation for all of Justin's trips.

I'm married this horrible man. He's awful. He doesn't treat me right, and it's really manipulating someone who they view as weak and easy to control, and they'll make accusations against their partner that's not even true. To try to lure somebody to do things for them, right, whether it's buy things for them or do their bidding for them

or things like that. And so if she was getting calls that she was desperate in this bad situation, I wonder if it's someone who's picking up on his kind of immaturity or easy the way he's influenced pretty easily, it sounds like, and is trying to actually manipulate him, and that could have led him into some trouble as well.

why he's making all these trips to see her. But maybe he realizes he's being manipulated or it's not going as he expected, and this is what causes him to have these mental breakdowns.

career like that? And if he was involved in a relationship with another woman and he thought he was coming back to California to rescue her for something, that could provide an explanation why he was willing to just abandon in his post.

he might have done so. Obviously, if Justin was involved in some sort of clandestine operation which required him to keep making trips to Monterey, why would the military transfer him to Washington in the first place rather than keep him close to home. However, I'm sure the transfer was very inconvenient for Justin, since his relationship with Yolanda was getting more serious and he was now being sent to

another post located over eight hundred miles away. For all we know, this could have taken a toll on his already fragile mental health and made him even more unhappy with the state of his military career. Of course, if the rumors are true and Justin really did have a second girlfriend in Seaside, then the transfer would have made things even more inconvenient for him and desperate enough to

go a wall to travel back to California. We still don't know where Justin went when he left Yolanda's apartment on all those secret trips, but we know he made at least one trip to Monterey, since his abandoned car was found in the parking lot of the Monterey Marina

Bay Travelodge. If Justin was the victim of foul play, I could see someone leaving his car there, but it seems odd that an outside party would go to the trouble of placing all of Justin's personal items, including his wallets and dog tag it is briefcase inside the trunk. I really get the impression that Justin staged the scene and left the items there himself, particularly when you remember

his previous conversation with Yolanda. He said that if his dog tags were ever found, then that would mean that he was dead. Of course, the only items of Justin's that could not be found were the handguns and ammunition that he'd recently purchased, meaning that he may have gone off to a remote area and shot himself in his His body has never been found.

to leave all identification behind. He also could have just left a life that he was tired of having to pretend to be somebody he wasn't and to try to not be the quote failure. He felt like he was he was living a double life. He might have felt like he was getting constricted with the truth soon going to be coming out, and he just wanted to leave

it all behind. It's pretty convenient that you kind of pack all your identification, your dog tags and things like that, just for everyone to find, and you're never found.

all over under a new identity. So I suppose he could have pulled it off, particularly if he made it down over the border in New Mexico or something where he would be much harder to track.

to end his own life with these weapons. And if he was indeed contracted by the CIA or something, wouldn't they then provide the weapons?

these weapons. So, like I just said, if Justin had always been planning suicide, you have to ask why would he feel the need to buy two handguns in over one hundred rounds of ammunition. It's also odd that he would purchase gun cleaning equipment alongside those items if the guns were only going to be used for the express purpose of shooting himself. So I don't think we can completely rule out the possibility that Justin legitimately bought those

guns for the purpose of protecting himself. The whether it was protection against something real or imaginary is another matter. But even if Justin did end his own life, he doesn't necessarily have to go to a remote area in order to do so. For all we know, his body may have been found at one point, but since he wasn't carrying any identification, he was buried in a pauper's

grave as a John Doe somewhere. Justin also happened to go missing right next to the Pacific Ocean, so if he drowned himself or jumped off a bridge into a body of water somewhere, that could also account for why his body has never resurfaced. Another possibility is that Justin did not kill himself, but decided to start over and live off the grid, which is why he left all of his identification and personal items behind in his car.

For all we know, Justin could have lived as a transient for a while, but if so, the odds of him still being alive after more than thirty years are not great.

couldn't run away from them. He might have got geographic he might have got some geographical distance between him and Yulanda, and maybe this other girlfriend and his issues with the military, but it didn't fix the problems, and maybe then he chose to end his own life, or he may have encountered somebody because of his mental health issues that chose

to prey upon him and ended his life. Even though I believe there's no truth at all to the idea that Justin went missing is part of some secret mission, I would not completely rule out the possibility that he got himself involved in something illegal which put his life at risk and led to him being murdered. However, there's just no evidence of that, and until we see something more concrete, I'll continue to lean towards Justin being responsible

for his own disappearance. I know that Justin was never officially diagnosed with any mental health issues, but you have to wonder if he might have started suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, as Yon said of that illness generally starts affecting young males when they're in their late teens or early twenties.

He may have legitimately believed that he was working on a secret mission for the government and that his life was in danger, but things may have reached the point where he ultimately decided that suicide or disappearing off the grid were his only options, but until we find Justin's body, we'll never know for certain.

Massachusetts will investigate a missing person's case from California. It would be one thing if Justin's death had been ruled as suicide and the authorities had closed the investigation, but he is technically still a missing person, and even if he did kill himself, it would be nice to recover his remains and provide resolution for his family. So if you happen to have any information about the unsolved disappearance

of Justin Bergwinkle, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts on this case.

No matter what was going on with Justin, whether he was in criminal behavior, whether he was having an affair, whether he completed suicide, or he you know, ran away and started a great new life. His family has no idea what happened, and so they're grieving as son that could have still been alive, or could have been hurt, or could have hurt himself, and all those what ifs

had to have plagued them their entire life. And so that's the real tragedy here is that you know, if Justin did take his own life, there's a prayer that he found peace that he was looking for. And if he, you know, ran into criminal behavior, there's danger that the community is still at risk because there's criminals active. Or if he ran off to create a new life, how sad that his family is left to handle the grief and he got to escape the life that he created,

you know. So it's the whole situation is absolutely tragic. No matter what the actual scenario was, the only thing I'm sure of is that it was not a secret mission with the military, and that the grief here for the surviving family members is something that didn't get to get resolved.

he let us know? And I think you get that in that situation, people experience that guilt where like, what if I could have done something to intervene, and people

unfairly punish themselves for somebody else's choices. And I just really wish at the end of the day that we somehow, like Robin mentioned earlier, that there's a possibility that Justin's body may have been found and maybe it's in a pauper's grave somewhere, that with all of these John and Jane does being identified, that Justin Bergwinkle, maybe he's out there somewhere and the family will get the answers that they deserve.

suspicious suicides, and allegations of a cover up. But this one was a lot different because Justin did not go missing near his military base. He went missing after he was a wall and his body was never found, and there was really no evidence to support the allegations that he was involved in a secret mission because the sole source of that was Justin himself, and judging by me his behavior, it's clearly showed that he was not in

his right mind at that time. So this is one where I don't blame a military conspiracy, but I am kind of surprised they haven't tried harder to find him, because usually they go all out trying to find soldiers who went a wall. But I'm not sure they did much of an investigation at all. It seems like the family had to do all the searching on their own, and I don't know how much investigation has been done

by law enforcement either. So that's why I don't think it's implausible that if Justin did disappear voluntarily, he could be living as a transient, He could be living off the radar somewhere under a new identity, or he could have just died as a John Doe and no one ever put two and two together and buried him in

a pauper's grave. But it is a sad story because no matter what happened, it appears that Justin either was having mental health issues or just got himself involved in something else where he wound up weighing over his head, and someone outside the military was responsible for his disappearance. We just don't have any evidence either way, and hopefully one of these days they'll find something. We'll bring a conclusive resolution to Justin's family.

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